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Crown Castle Announces $4.85 Billion AT&T Tower Transaction

Reinforces Crown Castle's position as largest provider of wireless infrastructure in the US with approximately 40,000 towers in the US

Urban-centric portfolio; nearly 50% of sites in top 50 US markets

High quality tenant profile; approximately 84% of pro forma consolidated site rental revenues coming from Big 4 US wireless carriers

HOUSTON, Oct. 20, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Crown Castle will acquire rights to approximately 9,700 AT&T towers for $4.85 billion in cash at closing (subject to certain limited adjustments). Under the definitive agreement, Crown Castle will have the exclusive right to lease and operate the AT&T towers for a weighted average term of approximately 28 years. In addition, Crown Castle will have the option to purchase the towers at the end of the respective lease terms for aggregate option payments of approximately $4.2 billion, which payments, if exercised, would be primarily between 2032 and 2048.

"We are very pleased with our agreement with AT&T, which strengthens our position as the largest provider of shared wireless infrastructure in the US, which we believe is the largest, fastest growing and most profitable wireless market in the world," stated Ben Moreland, Crown Castle's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Consistent with our focus on the top 100 US markets, nearly half of the AT&T towers are located in the top 50 markets, where we expect the majority of network densification and upgrade activity to occur. With an average of only 1.7 existing tenants per site, we expect the AT&T tower assets to provide significant growth opportunities driven by the continued consumer demand for wireless data services. While this transaction increases our tower count by approximately 33%, the transaction consideration represents only approximately 15% of our enterprise value. Additionally, we believe this transaction strengthens the credit quality of our revenue, with pro forma 84% of our consolidated site rental revenue coming from the Big 4 US wireless carriers. Further, we expect the impact from the contemplated transaction and related financings to be slightly accretive to our 2014 adjusted funds from operations per share and 5% accretive to our long-term adjusted funds from operations per share."